Chương 6
Grant's attorney could challenge each piece.
A chair could have been placed for reasons other than confinement.
A child's memory could be influenced.
A cracked phone could have been broken accidentally.
An injury could result from a fall.
Rachel rubbed her thumb over the edge of the temporary protection order.
“I hate that all of this can be explained.”
Nina said, “Most things can.”
Maya looked at her.
Nina continued, “Our job isn't to find facts that cannot possibly have another explanation. It's to show which explanation fits the evidence best.”
Rachel folded the order again, though it was already folded.
“What if he gets angry?”
No one asked who.
Nina said, “He may.”
“And then?”
“We plan for that possibility.”
Rachel laughed under her breath.
“Planning didn't help me last week.”
Maya spoke for the first time.
“It helped Ethan.”
Rachel looked at her.
Maya regretted the sentence immediately.
It sounded like pressure.
Rachel's face hardened.
“My son should not have had to make a plan.”
“No. He shouldn't.”
“Then don't use him to convince me.”
“I wasn't trying to.”
“You were.”
The room went quiet.
Maya could have defended herself.
She did not.
“You're right,” she said.
Rachel seemed almost disappointed.
Maya leaned forward, forearms on her knees.
“I want Grant held accountable. I also don't get to turn that into your obligation to make me feel like the call ended well.”
Rachel stared at her.
Nina picked up a peppermint and unwrapped it, giving them the privacy of an irrelevant noise.
Maya continued, “You asked what happens if you testify. Nina can tell you. You asked what happens if Grant gets angry. We can make a safety plan. But whether you testify is not a debt you owe Ethan, me, or anyone else.”
Rachel's eyes filled, but she blinked the tears away.
“That's not what the victim advocate said.”
“What did she say?”
“She said Ethan may feel safer if he sees consequences.”
Nina's expression tightened.
“That should not have been presented as pressure on you.”
Rachel shrugged.
“Everybody's being very nice while telling me what they think I should do.”
Maya sat back.
There was nothing useful to say to that.
Because Rachel was right.
After the meeting, Maya and Rachel walked to the parking lot.
Wind rolled a paper cup beneath a parked truck.
Rachel stopped beside Laura's car.
“Why did you become a cop?”
Maya had a collection of acceptable answers.
Public service.
Stable work.
Benefits.
A criminal justice class in college.
She used none of them.
“My dad said I wouldn't last six months.”
Rachel stared at her.
“That can't be the reason.”
“It isn't anymore.”
Rachel laughed.
Maya smiled.
Then Rachel said, “Grant used to say I couldn't finish anything.”
The smile left them both.
Rachel looked toward the courthouse entrance.
“I stayed with him partly because leaving would prove him right. Isn't that stupid?”
“No.”
“It is.”
“Okay. It's a little stupid.”
Rachel laughed again, surprised.
Maya said, “People do stupid things for reasons that make sense when they're inside them.”
“Is that police wisdom?”
“No. That's just being thirty-three.”
Rachel glanced at Maya's badge.
“You seem older.”
“Thank you.”
“I meant—”
“I know what you meant.”
For a few seconds they stood beside the car like two people who might have met anywhere else.
Then Rachel's borrowed phone rang.
Her face changed when she saw the number.
Maya noticed.
“Grant?”
“No.”
Rachel answered.
It was the elementary school.
Someone had called the front office claiming to be Ethan's uncle and asking what time his class was dismissed.
The caller had not given a name.
The secretary refused to provide information.
Rachel's hands began to shake.
Maya's body changed before her thoughts did.
“Tell them I'm coming.”
The school had locked its exterior doors by the time they arrived.
Ethan was still in class.
The principal met Rachel and Maya in the office. He was a thin man with tired eyes who kept apologizing for things that were not his fault.
The call had come from a blocked number.
The person asked whether Ethan rode the bus.
The secretary became suspicious because the caller could not name Ethan's teacher.
No information was released.
Rachel sat in a molded plastic chair and stared at the floor.
Maya asked procedural questions.
Had the call been recorded? No.
Did the phone system log incoming numbers despite caller ID blocking? The district's IT department would have to answer.
Were there cameras covering pickup areas? Yes.
Could the school change Ethan's release permissions immediately? Yes.
The principal turned to Rachel.
“We can require photo ID for anyone picking him up.”
“Only me and my sister.”
“We can set that.”
“And Officer Collins.”
Maya looked at her.
Rachel seemed not to realize what she had said.
Maya said gently, “I can't be an authorized school pickup person.”
Rachel closed her eyes.
“Right.”
The principal pretended to study his screen.
Rachel rubbed her palms against her pants.
“I don't know what I'm doing.”
Maya lowered her voice.
“You're changing the people allowed to pick up your son. That's what you're doing right now.”
Rachel nodded.
One thing at a time.
It became a phrase she hated and relied on.
The blocked call could not be tied to Grant.
His attorney produced phone records showing Grant at work during the time of the call.
That proved less than Rachel hoped and more than Maya wanted to admit.
Anyone could make a call at work.
Anyone else could have made it.
Suspicion was not evidence.
Grant obeyed the no-contact order for eleven days.
On the twelfth, flowers arrived at Rachel's dental office.
No card.
Rachel found them on the reception counter after lunch.
Yellow tulips.
Grant knew she hated roses.
That was the problem with advice about abusers sending flowers. It imagined men who knew only clichés.
Grant knew her.
May you like
He knew she liked tulips because her grandmother had grown them beside a white garage in Wichita.
He knew she cut the stems short and put them in drinking glasses because she did not own a vase.
